Tag Archives: Anchorage Daily News

Excellent detailed piece on Sarah Palin by journalist Michael Joseph Gross in the October 2010 issue of Vanity Fair …

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Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury

Former Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin speaks at the "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 2010.

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

Sarah Palin has now made two very clear public statements in the last day about the legitimacy of questions about the maternity of her son Trig. Here’s the first, transcribed from the interview above:

Would you make [Obama’s long form] birth certificate an issue if you ran?

I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers.

Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?

I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record — all of that is fair game. You know, I’ve got to tell you, too: I think our campaign, the McCain/Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were and perhaps what their future plans were. And I don’t think that that was fair to voters to not have done our jobs as candidates and as a campaign to bring to light a lot of the things that now we’re seeing made manifest in the administration.

I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama’s past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?

Hey, you know, that’s a great point, in that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn’t my real son. And a lot of people say, “Well you need to produce his birth certificate! You need to prove that he’s your kid!” Which we have done. But yeah, so maybe we could reverse that and use the same [unintelligible]-type thinking on them.

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask… which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

The US vice-presidential candidate’s memoir mocks the truth, but she remains a possible future American leader

"Going Rogue" features the lies and half-truths of Sarah Palin.

What can one say about one of the most compelling and bizarre works of “non-fiction” on the market, Going Rogue by Sarah Palin?

I have to say it stymies me somewhat. Treating it as some kind of factual narrative to check (as I began to), or comparing its version of events with her previous versions of the same events (as I have), and comparing all those versions with what we know is empirical reality, is a dizzying task. The lies and truths and half-truths and the facts and non-facts are all blurred together in a pious purée of such ghastly self-serving prose that, in the end, the book can really be read only as some kind of chapter in a cheap 19th-century edition of Lives of the Saints.

It is a religious book, full of myths and parables. And Sarah is fast becoming a religious icon of sorts for what is now the Republican base. On the first day of her tour, she dragged her infant with Down’s syndrome everywhere she went, even waving his hand to the crowds at one point as his little head swung back and forth. Here is the Madonna with child and a child that is an emblem of everything those who oppose abortion believe in.

Where in the world is Sarah Barracuda Palin? Alaska’s sultry superstar has once again mysteriously disappeared right before she was scheduled to speak at one of her very important fundraisers, this one so slutty teenagers who get knocked up have no choice but to have the baby unless they want to get the ol’ parental approval for an abortion.

Now normally Sarah’s habit of shirking her duties is limited to elected terms in office, but ever since becoming an unemployed publicity hound and Facebook junkie, Palin’s erratic behavior has instead metamorphosed into canceling paid speaking engagements at the very last minute while pretending she was never invited in the first place.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will not be delivering a speech at an anti-abortion rights event this evening as expected, making this the fourth time this year anticipated public comments from Palin have been scratched.

The Alaska Family Council has for weeks advertised that Sarah Palin would speak at a fundraiser and petition signing to promote an Alaska ballot measure that aims to prevent teenagers from getting an abortion without notifying their parents. Organizers only learned on Wednesday that Palin is out of the state and does not plan on attending the event, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Silly, right? After all, just a month ago, Palin was using Twitter to wax poetic on the enduring beauties of her home state: I’m “tasting a nibble of AK’s bounty,knowing AKns are never bored;so much to do & discover [sic],” she tweeted. The gossip, for now, is just gossip — the Palin team has remained mum. Still, the Providence Journal thought enough of the rumors to run its own article.

By popular demand, I am reposting this story about Mayor Sarah Palin eliminating building permits before her personal home AND the Wasilla Sports Complex were constructed in Wasilla, Alaska. The post originally appeared on the Sarah Palin Truth Squad back in October 14, 2008.

Although this is old news, it’s good to remember the personal ethics of Sarah Palin as she moves forward into her latest career.

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Sarah Palin winking to the cameras.

Wayne Barrett, investigative journalist and senior editor for the Village Voice, published a brilliantly illuminating exposé on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the building of her new Wasilla family home by the same contractors awarded the contract to build the new, multi-million dollar Wasilla sports complex. Also, throughout Sarah Palin’s political career, she has worked closely with lobbyists, promoting the interests of big business and oil corporations. Barrett was interviewed by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown as to the possible conflicts of interest these connections might have posed for Gov. Palin.

Along with the winks and folksy “doggone” moments early in her debate with Joe Biden last week, Sarah Palin repeated her familiar claim to the title of “maverick,” declaring that “as a governor and as a mayor,” she’s had a “track record of reform” and has now “joined a team of mavericks.”

Despite the free fall that her polling numbers went into after her disastrous interviews with Katie Couric, that branding as a “reformer” has been resilient. Introduced skillfully before tens of millions during an intense surge of interest six weeks ago, it’s been hammered home with repeated soundbites.

But the label doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. From the controversy that catapulted her to the governorship, to her ties to the indicted patriarch of Alaska’s GOP, to the multilayered nexus of lobbyists and Big Oil interests around her, and, finally, to the Wasilla sports complex that capped her mayoral career, the myth of Sarah Palin, reformer, withers under inspection.

Wasilla, Alaska Sports Complex

PALIN’S CLAIM to fame as an Alaska reformer-that she risked her career to expose the chairman of the state GOP-is revisionist. In fact, Palin supported the methane-drilling project that helped sink GOP boss Randy Ruedrich before she later decided she was against it-a mirror of her flip-flop on the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. And her reversal had more to do with seizing a political opportunity than following her conscience.